Microsoft Shuts Down Waledac Spam Botnet

Last week, Microsoft, like Google, took on a whole new level of cyber defense by shutting down the Waledac spam botnet.

According to the Microsoft video of the takedown, Waledac was capable of sending 1.5 billion spam messages a day. And in an 18 day period, Hotmail blocked 651 million waledac messages. The Waledac botnet is very intelligent, it not only has normal command and control features, but it also has peer to peer command and control, which makes it very hard to disable.

“Waledac was not a high threat, it’s less than 1% of the spam traffic,” Cox said. “What we’re worried about is Zeus, which is a far more damaging botnet, which is creating a substantial amount of spam.”

If taking down a system that could deliver 1.5 Billion spams a day didn’t even register, that’s truly scary indeed…